Fact vs. Fiction

[Cat Driver]

Wow! I'll have to keep that in mind next time Orly tower requests a rapid visual circuit.

Orly tower probably wouldn't be interested in your demo Dave, but you could drop by at the Airbus factory and wow them with your skills.

[Doc]

I am a training captain and TRE (type rating examiner), same as an ACP in Canada on the A319 for a major UK airline.

Seriously? Why all the interest in this side of the "pond"?
Call me curious.

[Cat Driver]

When you are sharing stuff with most of the posters here Doc you seldom ever know who you are communicating with because with anonymity comes the chances the poster has only flown into Orly on his/her computer flight sim.

If you are on approach to Orly in a Airbus A319 it is highly unlikely they will request an unusual maneuver so the comment made by Dave is nothing but poorly worded sarcasm.

I flew for about eight years in and out of Paris, but can not remember ever landing at Orly....we were based at le Bourget.

[PT6onH20]

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[Meatservo]

Lots of hate towards the lazy bus drivers, oddly enough from (seemingly) the guys who have never flown the line.

You know I was thinking the same thing. I think some of them bring it on themselves with the old "my job is so easy my eight year old daughter could do it" line. I've never understood why some professional pilots spend so much time trying to convince the world on one hand how easy they've got it, making it necessary for everyone else to get all stressed out trying to combat the popular image of a fat, incompetent boob complacently watching the world go by while the computers do the real work.

I think a lot of effort in years past went into countering the public perception that pilots were a bunch of arrogant braggarts, and now some kind of "social inertia" causes them to continue that rhetorical strategy, continuing to say "It's no big deal, really", years after the public started saying "you're right, it's not. Just get in and drive".

I'm sure like Cat Driver once pointed out, as long as aeroplanes still have rudders, elevators, and ailerons, and have rudder pedals and control columns, it still takes a particular skill to make the thing go where you want it, and we should all have at least a certain baseline of respect for one another. And while I'm on a soapbox, I'm getting tired of reading people slagging off the Air France pilots. Most of my friends who died in aeroplanes were "bush pilots", and it seems that Air France heavy jet crews are not the only people who sometimes forget how to manage low airspeed situations. For all the vaunted bush pilot "stick and rudder skills", most dead "bush pilots" wound up stalling them in too, or hitting immovable objects with less-than-irresistible force.

The original issue was whether a streamlined "cadet" program can produce first officers who are skillful enough to do the job, versus the traditional method of acquiring large amounts of PIC time before becoming an airline first officer. I would say the real evidence of one school of thought winning out over another would be in an analysis of the performance of new captains in a few years, when the first "cadets" are getting their upgrades.

[Cat Driver]

The world of flying has advanced far beyond what most of us understand when it comes to flying in the airline side of flying.

From what I observed during my last fifteen or so years in the industry the training industry has to take into consideration the new world of automation and the vast difference between what we grew up with and the reality of today.

I was fortunate to have worked for some of the worlds leaders in the industry including Air France, which also includes KLM now.

If one just stops to consider how many thousands of take off's and landings the airlines do every day and the number of accidents they have it is incredible how safe they are.

There will always be accidents as long as humans have control over any form of activity from playing hockey to flying jets.

The kids who go from zero to flying as cruise pilots on jets in Europe are really quite talented and fit just fine into the airline world.

Quite frankly I think the weeding out process to get rid of the drones works very well in the structured world of flying big jets.

. E.

[Doc]

I find myself no longer giving a rat's ass. Enjoy your day.